Recently, the Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein warned that there are forces bent on derailing the government’s 1Malaysia concept.

Hishammuddin was referring to the recent spate of arson and vandalism at places of worship but he failed to realize that the enemies of Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia concept are to found closer home – in the very sanctum of the Najib premiership!

MIC leaders, from its President Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu, are baying for Nasir’s blood and even demanding that Nasir should be detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA).

This is the last thing that should be done, for it will only make Nasir a martyr. Furthermore, the ISA detention-without-trial law is so iniquitous, unjust and undemocratic a legislation that I will not want to wish it on my worst opponents as its only proper destination is the scrapyard.

The strongest and most severe action must be taken against Nasir for his offensive, seditious and anti-1Malaysia outburst, labelling Indians and Chinese as “pendatang”, alleging that “Indians came to Malaysia as beggars and Chinese especially the women came to sell their bodies (jual tubuh)” and threatening to revoke the citizenship of Indians vocal about the subject cap for SPM examination.Read the rest of this entry »

When Anwar Ibrahim walks into the Kuala Lumpur High Court today, he will at least know what to expect.

Anwar, Malaysia’s one-time deputy prime minister and now the de facto leader of the first credible opposition in Malaysia’s independent history, is facing the third incarceration of his life. The first was a 22-month detention when a student leader in the 1970s; the second a six-year stint in 1998 for sodomy (overturned in 2004) and corruption, during the administration of his one-time mentor, Mahathir Mohamed. Now, he faces another sodomy charge, and the potential of 20 years in jail. Locally the press are calling it Sodomy II, like a sequel. “They use the same script,” he tells the AFR in an interview in his Kuala Lumpur offices. “I’ll leave it to the lawyers. I don’t have any trust in the system.”

That’s no surprise. Anwar’s trial represents an enormously significant moment for Malaysia, because it could make or break the opposition movement at a time of intense racial tension on a scale the country hasn’t seen since the race riots of the 1960s. Malaysia, though a sometimes uneasy patchwork of a Muslim Malay majority and significant Chinese and Indian minorities, has for decades been amongst the most moderate and peaceful of Muslim nations. Yet in recent months it has become a place where churches are firebombed over the right for Christians to use the word Allah, and where cows’ heads are kicked around outside Hindu temples.Read the rest of this entry »